How Do You Topple a Strongman? | After another dubious election victory, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, appears firmly in power. The only real potential threat, history shows, may come if his own security forces betray him

> Between 1950 and 2012, nearly two-thirds of the 473 authoritarian leaders who lost power were removed by government insiders, according to an analysis by Erica Frantz, a political science professor at Michigan State University who studies authoritarianism.

> To combat that threat, autocrats frequently try what political scientists call “coup-proofing”: They divide security forces into various fragmented units. That can keep any one branch from amassing too much power — and also cause forces to spy on one another.

> Mr. Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, created a tangled web of military, police and intelligence agencies.

> In Brazil, the military dictatorship in power from 1964 to 1985 acquiesced to a peaceful transition to democracy in part because it had secured amnesty for officers who committed abuses. As a result, few people have ever faced legal consequences for a government that killed more than 400 people.

> A study by Harvard’s Erica Chenoweth showed that over the past several decades, 57 percent of nonviolent resistance campaigns around the world had led to democracy, while violent campaigns led to democracy in less than 6 percent of cases.

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